Control of Automated Transport Systems

Freight transportation on roads is of utmost importance for our society. It accounts for a significant amount of all energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. In this talk, we will discuss the potential future of road goods transportation and how it can be made more robust and efficient, from the automation of individual long-haulage trucks to the optimisation of fleet management and logistics. Such an integrated transportation system benefits from having trucks travelling together in vehicle platoons. From the reduced air drag, platooning trucks travelling close together can save more than 10% of their fuel consumption. In addition, by automating the driving, it is possible to change driver regulations and thereby increase the efficiency even more. Control and optimization problems on various level of this transportation system will be presented. It will be argued that a system architecture utilising vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication enable robust and safe control of individual trucks as well as optimised vehicle fleet collaborations and new market opportunities. Extensive experiments done on European highways will illustrate system performance and safety requirements. The presentation will mainly be based on joint work over the last ten years with collaborators at KTH and with the truck manufacturers Scania and Volvo.